Vladimir Putin has chosen Hungary for his first state visit to an EU state since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis a year ago. Energy issues are expected to top the agenda, yet the Russian leader usually has an ace up his sleeve.

The Russian president’s visit to Hungary is keeping EU officials
in Brussels guessing about what sort of deals exactly are going
to be signed in Budapest.

Putin is visiting Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a time of
unprecedented confrontation between the western world and Russia
over the bloody conflict in Ukraine.

The EU has broadened its anti-Russian sanctions on Monday,
expanding the blacklist with 19 more people and nine new
companies. The EU blacklist now includes 151 citizens of Russia
and Ukraine’s self-proclaimed eastern republics, as well as 37
Russian companies.

The Kremlin press service said that talks of the Russian and
Hungarian leaders will focus on bilateral economic and trade
relations, and in particular the nuclear energy deal signed in
December.

Under a deal worth up to €10 billion, Russia’s Rosatom will build
a 2,000 megawatt addition to Hungary's state-owned nuclear power
plant MVM Paksi Atomeromu.

Russia is Hungary’s largest trade partner outside of the
28-nation EU, with exports worth $3.4 billion in 2013. Budapest
is also highly dependent on Russian energy, both gas and oil
refined products.

Russia supplies approximately 80 percent of the oil products and
70 percent of the natural gas consumed by Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been harshly criticized in the
west due to his close economic cooperation with Russia. Orban, in
turn, is critical of the EU for alienating Russia and plunging
into a painful trade war with it.

On the eve of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to
Budapest, about 3,000 people rallied in front of the Hungarian
parliament holding national and European Union flags and
demanding Orban's resignation.

Although protesters represented only about 0.17 percent of
Hungarian capital’s 1.75 mln population, PM Orban is being forced
to explain to Hungary’s EU partners and people of Hungary that
his policies are economically justified.

“We don’t want to get close to anyone, and we don’t intend to
move away from anybody,” Orban said in November 2014.
“We are not pursuing a pro-Russian policy but a pro-Hungarian
policy,” he added, advocating expansion of the only
Hungarian nuclear power plant, explaining that this is the
“only possible means” to lower dependence on external
energy resources.

EU critics tend to accuse PM Orban of authoritarian trends
because of the reforms he introduced to transfer more powers to
the central government to effectively leverage large business
entities, banks, mass media and other centers of power.

Orban is also famous for his skeptical attitude towards many
European Union’s policies, particularly Brussels’ siding with the
US in the sanctions against Russia, a campaign that damages
ailing European economies.

Despite all the accusations, Orban’s Fidesz party won last year’s
general election with a landslide victory, receiving practically
45 percent of votes and securing Orban’s third term as the
Hungarian prime minister.

Prime Minister’s supporters view his action as defending
Hungary’s national interests against agendas of international
corporations and foreign governments. Among the biggest successes
of the Orban government was the law that forced conversion of
mortgages denominated in Swiss francs, which saved Hungarian
borrowers from suffering a debt cost hike after Switzerland
unpegged their currency from the euro, which resulted in sharp 20
percent gain in value.

"We want to start negotiations as early as possible when
Turkey decides to purchase natural gas from Russia. We want to
start negotiations on how some portion of this natural gas can be
transported to central Europe through Turkey," Szijjarto
said during his visit to Turkey, as cited by China Daily.

Hungary is already in talks with Serbia and Macedonia on the new
natural gas delivery route that might pass from Turkey to Hungary
through a Greece-Macedonia-Serbia pipeline.